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Oklo designs small nuclear reactors that it plans to build, own, and operate to sell electricity to customers like data centers.
Oklo is a nuclear power company with a twist: it doesn't just sell reactors, it wants to build them, own them, and sell the electricity they produce. The company's product is a small, fast reactor called Aurora, designed to run on fresh or recycled nuclear fuel at power levels far smaller than a traditional nuclear plant. Its target customers are heavy electricity users — data centers, industrial sites, and remote communities — that want steady, round-the-clock power without the carbon emissions of fossil fuels.
The basic problem Oklo is solving is that big nuclear plants are slow and wildly expensive to build, often taking a decade or more and billions of dollars. Oklo's bet is that factory-built, much smaller reactors can be made faster and cheaper, and that customers will pay for power from a plant built right next to them. Rather than charging customers for a reactor, Oklo plans to earn money by selling the electricity over long-term contracts — more like a power utility than an equipment vendor. There is a giant catch: none of this is running commercially yet. Oklo has no operating reactors and no meaningful revenue, and its path depends on winning regulatory approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Its first license application was rejected by the regulator in 2022 over insufficient safety and engineering information, a serious setback the company has since worked to address. It is also chasing fuel: its plan leans on reprocessing used nuclear fuel, which the U.S. currently does not do at commercial scale.
Oklo went public in 2024 by merging with a blank-check company backed by Sam Altman-linked ventures (Altman is a private individual and former chairman), and its share price has swung wildly on nuclear hype and AI power demand. It has struck preliminary agreements to supply power, including a notable deal with Switch, a private data center operator. The company's real test is converting those handshakes into a licensed, built, and operating reactor — until then, it is a promise about the future of electricity, not a working business.
Saved answer · last researched 25 Oct 2026